Wouldn’t it curve and pull objects in all directions?
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Because it is easier for people to imagine a 2D surface that is bent then a 3D filled that is bent. Because it has to bend into a different dimension.
There are ways that you can represent that, but most of them are not that intuitive compared to the 2D model.
It’s difficult to represent the phenomena visually. But yes, gravity does bend space in 3-dimensions. There just isn’t a good way to show it visually.
Or actually a 4-d bend, but I feel like that is getting over the scope of this topic.
To visualize 2D space being bent, you need a third dimension, which we can easily visualize. To visualize 3D space being bent, you would need a fourth dimension, which out brains are not capable of visualizing.
the 2d model is a single plane of the 3d space, because humans are bad at visualizing 3d space on a 2d screen.
Because visualizing it with 3d space is like looking at reality. Literally, look around you. That’s what it looks like.
To understand why reality is the way it is, it helps to visualize it at a lower dimensional plane, as a representation.
A being that can perceive the 4th dimension also just asked why they visualise gravity on a 3d plane, when space is 4d.
Because our brains and bodies aren’t built to perceive more than 3 spatial dimensions. So it’s difficult to demonstrate 3D space being warped in a way our bodies and brains can interpret. So instead we drop everything down by 1, and show a 3D object warping a 2D rubber sheet.
Well to visualize it….thats literally the only point. Try imagining a warped 3d grid instead. That would be so much less easy to understand
It’s very hard for us humans to intuitively visualize 4 dimensions, which is what would be required to effectively represent 3-dimensional warping.
Much easier to show 2-dimensional space being warped to 3 dimensions and then say, “but now imagine the rubber sheet is 3 dimensional.”
Visualizing a 2D object stretching *away* from the only two dimensions it has into another dimension is easy.
Visualizing a 3D object stretching *away* from the only three dimensions it has into another dimension is…I mean…just go ahead and try it. Good luck. I’ll get some Advil ready for your headache.
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